Page 88 of The Book That Held Her Heart

“You’re not going to make it.” Starval moved Gothon’s hair clear of his face. “Best to meet your maker without secrets weighing you down, no?”

A dark patch on Gothon’s side bubbled as he coughed and sucked at the air as he tried to breathe. “Go to hell.”

“Honestly.” Starval shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe us if I told you where we’d come from, but you can believe that we’ve got no skin in this game. My brother is just incurably curious. He heard a barrel sneeze. What can you tell us about that? Before you die would be good, because, like I say, you haven’t got long. I mean, it’s sad and all that, but you’re pretty old anyway. And this way you dodge the bugs.”

“Fuc…Fuck. You.”

Evar pulled Starval back and crouched beside the old man. “I’m sorry about my brother. I’m actually here trying to teach him that people matter. A work in progress, as you can see.” Evar tried to pull up his leathers and turn his side towards Gothon. “I was also stabbed in an attempted murdertonight…you should—ouch—be able to see the wound? Anyway, I’m sorry this happened to you.” Evar met Gothon’s eyes. “I can’t make any promises. I really have no idea what’s going on here. I just heard a barrel sneeze. But I can say that where my brother goes, people have a habit of dying. If you point us towards the person who gave you this injury, there’s a good chance they’ll be dead before the day’s out.” He reached for Gothon’s hand and held it tight. If Evar were dying, he would want someone with him. Someone who saw him. Less than a day ago they had been sharing ales around a table, talking of the future. Whatever this was, it wasn’t right. And the strongest emotion he felt was sorrow.

“Oldo…” Gothon laboured for breath. “Hiding Amacar…children in the cellar…part…of a network…I was helping—”

“Bullshit.” Starval pushed his way back into the man’s view. “You hate Amacar…” He trailed off.

“Not so sharp…as you thought…you was.” Gothon’s laugh dissolved into painful coughing. Blood ran black from his mouth. Eyes that glittered in the starlight looked from Starval to Evar.

“Why would he do that?” Evar asked, Starval’s assessment of the landlord still fresh in his mind: a bully, a braggart, a blowhard.

Gothon tried to shrug but abandoned the effort with a gasp of pain. “Bloody-minded…he is…that one. He’d tell you…all sorts of…honourable…reasons.” He panted for breath, trying not to cough again. “Me…I think he…just wanted to thumb…his nose at the potentate.” His voice fell to a whisper. “…to start with at least…Took a shine to some of…them kids…took risks he didn’t have to…got…them.” He trailed off, eyes glassy. Evar turned to meet Starval’s gaze. “Got them away.” Gothon surprised them both by not being dead. But that, it seemed, was his last gasp, and he slumped against the wall.

Starval stood, wiping his hands on his leathers. “Well. There you are. A heart of gold behind a rough exterior…or something. Can we go now?”

Evar released Gothon’s hand, setting it across his lap. He stood slowly, burdened with mixed emotions. “ ‘Heart of gold’ seems to be pushing it.” He felt that the truer assessment would be, like the man in question, complicated. “People can do the right thing for the wrong reasons.”

“And the wrong thing for the right reasons.” Starval magicked a coininto his hands. “That’s why I decided upon a simpler, transactional morality. But you’ve stolen that from me, brother. You and Mayland.” The coin vanished. “So, now we find this girl of yours?”

“Where do you think they’ve taken him?”

“Oldo? No idea. Some dungeon where they can cut pieces off him, most likely.”

“Oldo and the children.”

“They send the kids to an island. They don’t come back. Worked to death, from what I’ve heard.”

Evar frowned. He wasn’t here for this. There were probably atrocities being carried out in the world he’d left behind. There would be murder and mayhem in each of the maybes they had climbed through to reach this one. He felt small and helpless and unworthy of any love that Livira might have had for him. “King Oldo. That’s what he said to call him.”

“Unless you were his friend.”

“And Gothon thought he started this to spite the potentate. A distant heir to the old dynasty, fighting the potentate’s core policy.” Evar walked towards the street gate. “That sounds like the sort of man who might warrant a public execution. That sort of man might even get taken before the potentate himself, for judgement?”

“He might.” Starval shrugged.

“Ever assassinated a potentate?” Evar dug for the silver he’d taken from Starval. He dug deeper, fingers finding only space. “You stole—” But no, Starval had left him a single coin. Evar held it out to him.

“Emperor, prince, king, sultan, and sultana, magister, queen, overlord…satrap…” Starval counted them off on his fingers. “But no.” He took the coin from Evar’s grasp. “I don’t believe I’ve ever ended a potency.”

Evar lifted the gate bar. “Potency? Is that what they call it? Really?” He pushed the gates open.

“Fucked if I know.” Starval walked through. “Maybe we can ask him.”

To sneak intoa palace was, Starval explained, an extremely difficult thing to do. The methods employed to stop exactly that thing had beenevolved over very many years of trial and error, each failure underlined by a dead monarch of some description. To sneak into a palace that one had not observed at length was suicide. Preferably, the assassin would have visited the building in a friendly guise, checking out the interior organisation in a leisurely manner. Ideally, they would possess plans for the structure—ones that included secret passages, hidden doors, and concealed defences.

“You’re saying you can’t do it?” Evar asked.

“I’m saying that we’re going to end up leaving a lot more bodies behind us than just this potentate of yours. I’m saying that the alarm is probably going to be raised, and that you’ll be called on to use everything our sister taught you. And that if we’re not quick, then the potentate—who could well be this human king we’re looking for and have this book we want—will just be bundled off by his guards to somewhere even more difficult to get at. I’m saying that the sensible thing to do would be to observe the place for a week, to find a way to get inside officially, and to plan ahead for as many eventualities as we can think of.”

“I’m not waiting. Oldo will be dead or tortured within a day. You said so yourself. And those children—”

“Children you have never even laid eyes on, brother. Children who are part of a stream flowing to this murder island. A place where they’ve been dying for several years now.”

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